You learn something every day and I learned yesterday the longest point in tennis history was 29 minutes long! Yes, you read that right, a professional tennis rally lasted 29 MINUTES long.

How did I learn such a rare nugget of tennis trivia? I will tell you. I messaged Jean Hepner a few weeks ago asking about her four and a half hour match with Barbie Bramlett at US Open which included nearly 20 match points.

Tennys Sandgren, without a coach, has won two rounds of qualifying matches in straight sets against Yatsuki Watanuki and Mats Moraing, the big German coached by Philipp Petzschner. Sandgren needs to get by Matthias Bourggue to reach the main draw for the third time.

Andre Agassi produced mediocre results with Novak Djokovic, shortly before Djokovic re-hired his old coaching team which resulted in Djokovic returning to his best level and winning Wimbledon and US Open and regaining the ATP world no. 1 ranking. Djokovic’s success begged the question…why couldn’t Agassi inspire Djokovic to return to glory?

Back in 2008, Rafael Nadal was dubbed the “King of Clay” – he wasn’t by any means the first player to be awarded this title, but there’s little doubt that he’s the most successful and the undisputed “King of Clay,” with eleven French Open titles to his name.

One such player, aiming to emulate and strip Rafa of his French Open title later this month is Austrian, Dominic Thiem. At 25-years-old, the ATP world number 4 is seven years younger than his rival and has upset him before, as we will go on to mention.

First set Nadal comes out with full ferocity and a sense of desperation. He has not win a clay tournament all year and urgently needs to win the final in Rome to restore and re-establish his King of Clay dominant aura as Roland Garros looms around the corner.

Nadal dominates Djokovic 6-0 but as Nadal has that facial expression of fierce ruthless intensity, Djokovic looks tired and not all there mentally.

When a coach has total control of a player and shields this player from any outside coaching influence, no matter how valuable, to protect his own ego, there is one way to overcome this. Offer information and advice here because the player has revealed curiosity to read this site.

College tennis has lost a lot of its allure and prestige since the days when Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Arthur Ashe and Stan Smith all won NCAA championships in the 1960’s and 1970’s. The first big junior Americans who skipped college to turn pro were Michael Chang, Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras. Before those players turned pro in the 1980’s it was assumed a top American junior prospect would play at least one year of college tennis.